The Idea Synthesizer

 The elevator pitch exercise during class was a great chance to rethink my business plan. Going into the pitch, I always thought of my business as a side gig. I just wanted an idea that I could make a little extra money on the side. However, going through the pitch, Andrew Fry (my instructor) challenged me to think bigger. I felt pretty confident giving a pitch. I'm used to having to pitch ideas at work and in volunteer settings. To get other people to commit their labor to something, you have to sell them on the idea. One thing I've noticed through life, is that passion is contagious. If you present something with passion, it will spark others curiosity and activate their imagination. If you do that, you can start to get another person to indulge your passion, or maybe even become passionate about what you're pitching themselves. Before the pitch, I was mainly looking at small Etsy and Ebay stores as my model. But after the elevator pitch, I was able to go back and rethink...

John imparts many important lessons when seeking investment. When looking for funding, it helps to know what angel investors are looking for. First off, investors want you to be successful. Nine out of ten businesses fail, and they want to back the winner of the group. This means that any investor worth their salt is going to do their due diligence. They want to see everything is in order, including patents, trademarks, copyrights to financials, contracts, and everything else related to business planning. It is important that the business is well run, planned, documented, and adequately protected. They also want to see that the founder has invested in the company. This demonstrates that the founder has skin in the game and is willing to commit. Once due diligence is satisfied, angels are looking for a 10x return on investment over five years. This is because they need enough of a return to offset the average failure rate of businesses.  Typically businesses go through five stages o...

Brian's talk was a good glimpse into the world of SiteCrafting. There were many interesting aspects to the work of contract website creation. I really appreciated how Brian didn't shy away from referring customers to other services like Squarespace when they couldn't afford SiteCrafting or if it didn't seem like they were the best fit. There was also excellent insights about working with 3rd party design firms, and how much of a nightmare it could be. The story Brian Forth laid out about how the design firm they were working with really screwed them over by over promising to the client and then leaving them to actually implement the promised features. In the end, SiteCrafting ended up losing money on the contract. It was a lesson in picking who you collaborate with, and sticking to dealing with clients directly whenever possible. Designers left to their own devices won't adequately consider the engineering costs of their design, especially when all of these costs ar...